First posted birds with new to me 1Dmk4

All great shots. That one where the chickadee is flying down off the limb is priceless. I especially like it where you showed the not so cropped view.

Poindexter - I totally agree that it could be me but I just want to learn the best I can but in the meantime I want to make sure the equipment is working to its maximum.

Gunter - Thanks, great username. Me too

here is the photo with my 70-200 with 1.4x extender

EXIF - f8 - 1/6th of a sec. - ISO 2000

I think this is sharp enough also.

I'm baffled....I think you've received a lot of great advice even though we weren't able to pin-point your problem but maybe you have enough to go on for future testing.

Well if these stills are sharp it has to be my technic. So if I have it right my points of concentration are:

Keep my shutter speed up.
Get as close as possible.
Keep my AF trained on the birds eye(s)

If anyone has any other tips please let me know, or if anyone thinks the phone photos aren't as sharp as they should be with my equipment please let me know.

Thanks

Gary Wiant wrote in post #17435303
Well if these stills are sharp it has to be my technic. So if I have it right my points of concentration are:

Keep my shutter speed up.
Get as close as possible.
Keep my AF trained on the birds eye(s)

If anyone has any other tips please let me know, or if anyone thinks the phone photos aren't as sharp as they should be with my equipment please let me know.

Thanks

It's difficult for any of us to judge fine detail in this image Gary unless we could zoom in. We'll have to leave that to you, but as is the image looks fine.

An addition to the 3rd item above is locking the AF point. I almost always lock focus point to the center AF point which you may have read in your manual is the most accurate AF point in the array on the 1D MkIV.

Keep shooting and bringing us examples as that's really the best teacher!

Gary Wiant wrote in post #17434637
Can I check EXIF on a RAW prior to it being imported into lightroom?

I coupled LensAlign & FocusTune 3, so I did not have to "pick" my best image it is all automatically selected. I'm sure as you know with the 1D4 you can only select 1 MA per lens, so I performed LensAlign at maximum Zoom.

Thanks again for the help, any additional information is appreciated.

I'm pretty sure EXIF cannot be seen in RAW files as there are few programs other than ACR that can access the file.

I'm not familiar with the FocusTune 3 software as I use the "manual" method only with Lensalign. You are correct about the body only being able to register 1 MA value per lens, but the addition of an extender reports to the body as a different lens. I've never seen my extenders change the MA value of the lenses I've used, but you should probably check for yourself to be sure.

Yes I have the AF point locked in the center point.

Focus tune is very impressive check it out. I know that the camera considers the lens with extender a completely different lens then the lens by itself. Both the MA numbers with and without the extender are different and everyone I've talked to said their numbers are different with and without extenders some have said drastically different. When I said the camera only allows 1 MA entry per lens, I was referring to the fact that some of the newer cameras ( namely the 7D II ) allows MA entries for 2 different zoom distances per lens.

I went to take more bird photos today but they didn't have the feeder out so I wasn't able to get any new photos.

thanks

"Can I check EXIF on a RAW prior to it being imported into lightroom?"

Yes, you can, use the program called, "Faststone Image Viewer" to do that, not just that, but this little free program is one of the best out there, I use it daily, I love it for viewing all of my stuff. It's the fastest I have seen, and you will see that a lot of people here use it too.
(That is IF you meant in another program, if not, OOPS!)

http://www.faststone.o​rg/FSViewerDetail.htm

Randy

I will check that software out. Thank yoi

You're welcome!

Randy

I like'm without the vignetting, with that said still good shots and #3 is great that is unique shot and good timing.

Thanks I'm liking without now also